Greenhouse

One of the problems with living in Sweden is the proximity to the North Pole. This cause the winters to be long and cold and which in turns makes growing plants a bit tricky. To help extend the growing season a bit we decided to build a greenhouse. It will definitely help at the end of the season - we had many almost ripe tomatoes at the end of last summer that needed only a few more days, but the frost got too them and we lost a large part of the harvest. Carina is also quite eager to start planting seeds in the greenhouse and replanting the more mature plans - at the beginning of the growth season. Lastly, there have been a few losses due to the wildlife, that may be prevented to some extend.

The greenhouse we built.

Our house came with a old smithy from the 1600's on which a garage was build (probably around the 1950's). Onto this a chicken coop was build (between 2010 and 2015). We decided convert the chicken coop into the greenhouse.

The chicken coop.

I thought that the main work would be to cover the structure in glass or hard plastic. However, during a visit by Carina's parents her Dad mentioned that we should use soft greenhouse plastic. We went online and found that this is an excellent option. We could order it online (here) and it was not too expensive for enough to cover the whole structure (although we calculated wrong and had to order more a second time ).

The main work thus became clearing out the trees and stumps that were in the chicken coop and building a floor. Unfortunately we did not take any photos of how it looked before we removed the plants from the coop. I can however mention that we had to start by using a bow saw to remove the newly sprouted shoots from the stump and the rest from the roof. Then we needed to cut away a few wires from the roof to remove the bit that grew into the wire-mesh. This was followed by taking the weed-eater with a blade attachment into the space to remove the rest of the undergrowth. Carina spent several hours after that removing the rest of the plant material and leveling the floor a bit. We were left with a floor sloping up to the garage and only 4 big stumps. To prevent the weeds from sprouting immediately we poured some salt onto the floor.

The floor - level-ish and most of the plant material removed.

Adding some salt.

We drove through our town one day looking for pallets. We found a few as well as several packing crates that we took home. I spent one afternoon sawing the boards from the packing crates.

Pallets found in town.

Crates sawed into boards..

We placed the pallets on the floor trying for a reasonably level surface.

The floor in making

We used the boards from the packing crates as floorboards. Everything was nailed together and the floor turned out reasonably well.

Flooring done.

A chicken coop with a wooden floor.

The next step was to add the plastic covering. We started with the roof since it was the most awkward shaped and the largest section (note we overlapped all the pieces from the top downwards - thus even starting with the roof the wall sections are tucked in under the overhanging bits and water should not flow inwards). Another problem was that we were not able to reach the garage wall at the top of the roof - the reason being that we decided to leave the wire mesh in place. A ladder could not be placed on the inside and the mesh and roof in general is not strong enough to carry my weight. We therefore stapled the one section of the plastic to a wooden beam that we attached to the wall (we could at least reach the sides of the beam while standing on ladders).

Cutting the sheet of plastic - for the roof. 

To ensure that the plastic did not rip on the wire mesh we covered all the edges with silver tape. Once the roof was dragged into place we added a few staples all round to keep it there while cutting the next sections.

All the sharp edges covered in silver tape.

Seems like it fits!

The rest of the covering was quite easy. We just needed to cut the piece to size, fold it under the previous section and staple it to the wood.

We covered the stapled sections with clear packing tape to help reduce the stress on the plastic and seal the overlapping sections.

Covering the front - the excess was removed after stapled to the bottom.

Covering the sides. 

We decided to add a window. I added a wooden beam where the bottom plastic section needed to attach. The top section was only stapled on top part and a wooden broom handle was stapled to the bottom. The sheet can be rolled up to open the window and is kept open/closed by small hooks. I added some overlapping plastic for the window sheet to fold into on the sides which makes it seal quite nicely.

Working on the window panel.

Double seal when window is closed.

Rolled up. - open window-

The final piece to cover was the door.

The last step in this project was to move all the plants. We have a lot of tomatoes a few chilies and miscellaneous other plants.

Carina and Donkie moving plants into the greenhouse.

More plants.

I hope that the greenhouse works well. There are a few things that may make it a bit sub-optimal. For example it faces east. This means that it gets a lot of sun in the morning and nothing at all in the afternoon. Ideally I would have liked it to face south if it could not be freestanding - but this is the structure that we had... I also hope that the wood used for the flooring does not decay too easily in the warm humid environment. This is something that we will deal with if it becomes a problem. Lastly, I am slightly worried about snow on the roof in the winter. The wire-mesh will support the plastic sheeting but I think we may need to remove some snow if it becomes to heavy for the whole structure.

Other than that I am happy. More important, Carina is happy. Now we can look forward to more produce from our own backyard.

Current view inside - next season it may be too small...

R&C

New Induku website

In an attempt to separate the Induku shop from taking over this blog, I have created a website exclusively for blogging about the shop. This blog will continue as before but with fewer posts on what I am making and selling. You are of course more than welcome (and even encouraged) to head over to the new site and see the new and exciting projects I am working on - just click here.  Feel free to also follow the new blog ;)

R&C

Electronic cat door and extensions.

A while ago  my dad I installed an electronic cat door in the basement (available from this company: Petsafe). The door is programmable and reads the chips implanted in our cats' necks. This means that only our cats can enter through the door. For a while we had another cat enter our house (when we kept a window open), who devoured all our cats' food and also had several fights with them. This problem is now solved.

Cat door installed into window (outside).

Exit trough the window.

A second big advantage of this door is that we can program it to keep our cats inside. We prefer to have them in when it is dark and the door lock at sunset (note: they can always enter but at night not exit). We have set the door to open only after we have left for work in the morning. The reason being: our cats like to walk with us when we are outside. We take the bus to Uppsala and the bus stop is 300 meters away, across a bridge and very busy road. The cats normally do not cross the bridge (not that we know off) and are separated from the busy road by a river - unless they are able to follow us.

Our active cats.

The one problem with the door is that it is made from a reasonably thin piece of plastic and when closed it is not airtight. In Sweden, the temperature can be quite low and openings like this tend to make the house cold. To insulate the door a bit I decided to build a box around the outside of the door on the platform from where the cats enter. This "entrance hall" will reduce the loss of temperature a lot since, it not only serves as a second insulating area but will disrupt the airflow that creates a draft into the house.

Parts used for building the entrance hall. Should provide these plans to IKEA to sell as an item :) 

Adding some decorative elements.

Small double pane window.

Construction of the box.

Note the graffiti on the inside.

Plastic flap on the outside. Similar one on the inside (quite flexible and easy for the cats to enter/exit)

Insulation material used during installation.

There is enough space inside to add another layer of insulating material if it is needed. The box is made to be removed in the summer.

Box installed on platform.

Although this is not something I can put in my ETSY shop I do mention that I make custom items. A cat door and entrance hall combination may be a bit strange as an item to sell but it is made from wood and did enjoy making and installing it - thus if you need one do not hesitate to contact me for a quote ;)

Hope everyone keeps warm this winter (or cool in summer if you are reading this in the southern hemisphere).


R&C

Shop open

After several months messing about with bits of wood I have accumulated several things that I think could be of interest to other people. I thus created an online shop using the ETSY platform  (shop here) - opened on 15 September 2015. Here you are welcome to look at some of the products I have and I would very much appreciate critical feedback and suggestions. Of course if you fancy anything please feel free to do some shopping :)

The name of the shop is Induku. This is the Zulu word for stick. I started carving sticks into small chess figures while living in an apartment carving sticks. Some of the items (especially the maple pendants) are made from mere sticks that I pick up. I think the name is somewhat appropriate. 

There are several items in the shop and all were made using a scroll saw (more details on how some items are made and about the scroll saw in a future post). Two main groups are books and wooden pendants.

Books

I needed a book a while ago (how to make a denim book), and enjoyed the process quite a lot. I thus made some of the scroll saw pictures into books covers and bound them in a few different ways.

Some of the items may look a bit grim - but that is part of the style...

I decided to make it possible to add a personal touch. 

If your name is on the cover please send me your postal address ;)

Any suggestions on what would be cool on a cover is appreciated

Pendants

Since I had a load of sticks laying in the basement I decided to cut them into discs to be able to cut with the scroll saw. The simple pictures that are possible to cut makes nice pendants.

Most of the pendants currently in stock

A bit of a puzzle

Will someone buy both?

Infamous characters.

Other
As inspiration strikes I will make other things also. Currently I am making a clock face and will have some extra to sell. But I also have a whole book full of ideas (a denim book), and will continue to make all sorts of items.

Some of the other items - these are from alder-wood.

I am not sure if there is any market for the things I made but it is fun to make and I will post more on the process of some of these items. 

R&C

Induku on ETSY

Cart for air filter

Sawdust in your lungs are, apparently, bad. I knew this and to ensure I have good air where I work I recently obtained an air filter. This machine is quite big and my space is a bit limited. Additionally, I have two rooms that I use and wanted to move the air filter between them.

The solution, a cart to carry the filter. In addition, I now have an extra work area and included some drawers where I keep most of my sanding equipment. To see the process of building the cart have a look at the video below (c.a. 14 minutes of working at increased speed). 

For the frame, I used the long fence posts. This is the same as I used for the my work bench and there are still some left. The rest is made from some metal hardware I bought, a few pieces of plywood and thin press-board that came as free packing material in an order we received. 

I am using the cart and filter a lot with a new project that I am working on now. This new project is the most complex and elaborate thing I have ever build. More on this project later...

R&C

Why we need a chainsaw...

Where we live there it often seem are in the middle of a wind corridor. We often have quite strong gusts mostly in one direction. Looking at the landscape it there are not a lot of trees, buildings or other obstacles from where the wind comes.

In the beginning of June we had some serious wind and not surprising there was some damage in the area. We were lucky that only a branch form one of our trees broke but our neighbors had a whole tree blown onto a small shed. The branch from our tree fell into a bushy area breaking several shrubs. We needed to remove this and below is a video of the process. It took around an hour (the video is compressed to 5 minutes), and we had no motorized assistance. I feel that a chainsaw will be quite handy in these circumstances. There are also 3 dead trees in that we will remove at some stage and I am not sure that my ax skills are up well enough developed. We are thus considering getting a small chainsaw.



With all this wind around our house we at some stage start to measure it (as scientist we cannot help collecting). I also have several  ideas on how to harness this constant resource and will post some of the projects a bit later.

R&C

Dart Cabinet

During one of our shopping trips, Carina and I saw an extremely cheap dartboard set (around $4). We decided that we will include this in our jordkällare-game-room-cave (more on that later - but see picture here) and bought the set. Once home, we found that the quality of the set may reflect the price. The darts are made from a cheap plastic and not extremely straight - one even had a broken point that I needed to sharpen. After playing a few rounds with a plywood board as backing I decided that we need a very nice cabinet for this set. I thus build the cabinet shown below. There may be a bit of a discord between the quality of the set and the cabinet but overall I am happy with the outcome. The cabinet is made from stained pine plywood and the picture and scoreboard from birch plywood.

Finished dartboard cabinet

Cheap dartboard and darts - note the one dart has a shorter point...

Initially I thought that I will quickly build a plywood box to house the board and call it a cabinet. However, when I started to plan it I thought that doors that have a arch to the top may be nice and from then onward the whole thing took on a life of its own. At many steps a simple element became more elaborate and following is a few pictures of how this cabinet evolved from a box rather than just being built.

After quick glance online I saw that most dartbord cabinets are a square box with 2 doors. I thus started by cutting the back and sides using the pine plywood and 2x4 cm beams.

Simple box at the start

As mentioned the doors was where I started to change the whole thing from a mere box into a cabinet. This was of course due to the images on the interwebs of classical cabinets (I later found more information on cabinets and saw this video by DIRESTA - the video also inspired met to continue building something a bit more elaborate).

I therefore decided to make doors with arched tops. After I squared the doors I drew the top of one door and cut it on the scroll saw. I used this first one as template to mark and cut the second door. I spent a bit of time to sanding the doors together to get nice edges that are exactly the same.

Doors with arched tops being sanded

Checking that everything is square

I decided to stain the cabinet but first wanted to add a bit of detail to the front of the door along the edge. I made a cutting tool to cut along the edge and leave a thin line. This did not turn out as nice as I thought but I did have a straight line all around the edge of the doors. Using the Dremel with a I spent one evening carving (and then sanding) small half circles along the line. It looked much better but did take more time than i initially thought I would spend on the details on the door edges.

Adding detail to the door edge

I tried a light oak stain and added two coats.

Testing the stain on the backside

I found some hinges that were removed from a sandbox. I straighten, cleaned and drilled counter sink holes.

Old bent hinges

Hinges like new after some work

Checking fit of hinges

At this stage the project was already out of hand. A picture in contrasting wood across the two doors therefore seemed and OK addition and I started to look for pictures indicating that this may be a dartboard cabinet. I found a few and the simple picture was redesigned into something more complex. I spent a bit of time to edit all the lines to ensure that the whole image will not fall apart when done cutting.

Picture for front and scoreboard stuck to birch plywood

Cutting on the scroll saw

Broken...!?...nope - only half done

Cat critically evaluating progress

Image done

At the same time I realized that we have no idea on how to actually play a game of darts. After more searching online I found a common and seemingly popular game called "Cricket" (  more information on the game here). This necessitated that a scoreboard was included in the inside of the cabinet. I thus designed the scoreboard. I did not want a chalk board and sanded the scoreboard in the middle section. This created a groove for a paper to slide in where we could write the score.

Cutting of scoreboard done

Groove to be sanded marked

Lastly I made some shelves to hold the darts and a pencil. Here it helped that the scroll saw table could be tilted. I drilled holes for the darts, cut a groove for the pencil and stained and glued the shelves to the door.

Slanted shelves

Testing fit of darts

After all the parts were cut I added 3 coats of lacquer to the cabinet and 5 coats of spray lacquer to the image and the score board.

Shiny door

When all the parts were dry and shiny I fitted the doors to the cabinet and glued the picture parts carefully to the doors. Luckily everything seemed to fit nicely.

Right side of picture being glued to door

I glued the score board to the inside and the cabinet was done.

Final clamping

We tested the cabinet in the basement but Carina is hesitant to throw darts towards it (she thinks it is nice in the current condition and will not improve with the addition of holes). If we get a generous offer I will thus sell it ;) - Otherwise the plan it to place it in the jordkällare - and possibly buy better darts.

Doors closed

Parts nicely sliding past each other...

...to reveal...

...a cheap dartboard...

and some darts

The scoreboard

Sliding in a paper (A5)

Writing names and scores

Nice detail on the edge :)

Testing the cabinet

Not a good score

We have the feeling that this is a type of game quite often found in pubs and a future project is to install a bar next to the dartboard.

Opening in action

R&C